See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Tom Brokaw, via businessandmedia.org: “I was at The Washington Post earlier today,” Brokaw said. “And in the lobby they’ve got a wonderful graphic describing how the printing press works and where it is … 75,000 copies an hour it can turn out. Its last run is at 2:15 in the morning and [has] an automatic…
In 2000, Salon posted an amusing spoof of Ginsberg’s Howl. I saw the best minds of my occupation destroyed by venture capital, burned-out, paranoid, postal, dragging themselves through the Cappuccino streets of Palo Alto at Dawn looking for an equity-sharing, stock option fix, HTML-headed Web-sters coding for the infinite broadband connection to that undiscovered e-commerce…
An excerpt from a story about The Laptop Club, a group of kids who crafted their own laptops from construction paper. Name: Mandy Age: 8 How often do you use a computer? Five times a week. What do you like to do when you’re using a computer? Play games and write stories and poems. What…
While the second-most-common rating that Amazon customers have given this product is five stars, some 40% have given the Kindle one star. The vast majority have not purchased the product, but are simply warning other would-be customers about bad experiences with previous e-book purchases, including e-books purchased from Amazon. I still want one…
Via Newsweek: It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No instruction manual or “For Dummies” guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can’t be improved upon, and react with…
Lost Pig wins Interactive Fiction Competition 2007. Pig lost! Boss say that it Grunk fault. Say Grunk forget about closing gate. Maybe boss right. Grunk not remember forgetting, but maybe Grunk just forget. Boss say Grunk go find pig, bring it back. Him say, if Grunk not bring back pig, not bring back Grunk either.…
Inside Higher Ed has an interview with Christine L. Borgman The scholarly communication system has evolved over a period of centuries — it doesn’t shift quickly. Scholarly journals still look a lot like they did in the 17th century, for example. The tenure system is a much stronger driver of scholarly infrastructure than is technology.…
BBC: A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from “rooms” in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website. The 17-year-old is accused of stealing 4,000 euros (£2,840) worth of virtual furniture, bought with real money.
I really like the interface I stumbled across on the Evening Standard website. The version here on my page is just a static screen grab, but on the real site when you mouse over a title, the item drops open to reveal the photo and the caption… it feels far less distracting than a popup,…
Author, blogger, and unrepentant geek Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley “The Writers Make Me Save the Ship Every Other Episode” Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, uses an interactive fiction trope for a little comparative media analysis. LOOK >A twisty maze of passages, all alike, is behind you. You face a wall with four…
Someone bought a collection of old slides from a second-hand shop, scanned them and posted them online, then got in touch with the photographer — who had tossed them into a trash bin 30 years ago. I was an artist in Vietnam and served with the Department of Information, Mac Headquarters. During my time there…
In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd reflects on the show biz writers’ strike. Hillary Clinton had the bad luck to fumble a debate before the writers’ strike knocked late-night comics off the air. “I shudder to think what’s happening to all the kids who keep in touch with world news by listening to reports…
I spent a few minutes enjoying Homestarrunner’s Peasant Quest. The text-and-image hybrid is not something I played as a kid — I guess I just missed that stage.
Well, Google didn’t say “glarbifulous” on its own, but I had a good reason to search the internet for a nonsense word. In order to confirm my feeling that the Associated Press’s preference for “Web log” is far less popular online than the traditional “weblog,” I did a quick Google search. 12,900,000 Google hits for…
According to Rebecca Blood, in early 1999, Jesse James Garrett posted a list of 23 web sites that posted links and brief commentary. The Wayback machine’s archive of Garrett’s site returns this list from early 2000. badlands bump camworld flutterby genehack gulker hack the planet honeyguide jjg.net infosift linkwatcher metalog ltseek macronin nowthis obscure store…
WCBS-TV: The spam scam involves users unknowingly sending their MySpace friends e-mails and posting comments on their profiles that plug a ploy for the supposedly free gift card that they’ll never actually see, touch, or spend. In fact, to lead the younger members on, the ads are written in “kids-speak.” One such posting starts off…
Clive Thompson, from Wired: I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor. Specifically, I’m poor in time. The best players have dozens of free hours a week to hone…
In The Escapist, Tom Rhodes takes a stab at W.B. Yeats/Gordon Freeman slash crit. It’s more of a nice try than a slam dunk; yes, it’s possible to make these connections, and the insights are, well, insightful… but what the article lacks is an argument for why this interpretation is necessary, why it offers a…
On Grand Text Auto, Andrew Stern writes a good post about the distinction between character-driven games and purely linear narrative (which makes for a poor gaming experience). No one can disagree that games should be “player-driven”, another way of saying games with high agency. I take a purist’s view on this; I quickly lose interest…
There’s not a whole lot more to this short article from the Press Gazette, but it’s another sign of Google’s power: Google is “hugely dangerous” and is one of the major preoccupations of News Corp, according to the editor-in-chief of Times Online. Anne Spackman, speaking as part of a panel about the future of newspapers…